


All Along

by Miss_Ash



Category: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: + a long suffering Mac who really deserves a holiday and a bottle of scotch, 5+1 Things, F/M, Fluff, also this isn't exactly a movie fic, but there are still spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23544577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: They are not lovers, not yet, except the fact that theyare.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 63
Kudos: 286





	All Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [batard_loaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batard_loaf/gifts).



> Next chapter of virus fic should be up by the end of the week, but I needed some brain sorbet (and to go back to the 20s) so jumped at this lovely prompt from batard_loaf (and friend): 
> 
> _"I would call them lovers because they love each other, but that's just me. I feel like sex is not the qualifier if you love someone so much you'd die for them and they for you. Sex is like the official stamp maybe on the envelope."_ \- What's a time when someone called Jack and Phryne lovers (or said 'your lover' about the other one) to one of their faces, before they first had sex?
> 
> Because I'm me, this clocked in at 4000 words. Because quarantine has turned me delirious, though, it also ended so much fluffier than I know what to do with. Anyway, I hope this does some of what you were looking for <3
> 
> Title is from the Rumi quote - _"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along."_ \- only I sorta bastardised with sexual undertones. Sorry, Rumi.

The first time anyone ever calls them lovers takes Phryne completely by surprise. 

Not because she finds the concept shocking, or even because she’s opposed to the idea (she has been trying to gently coax Jack Robinson into her bed for some little time, enjoyable as she imagines she’d find the company), but for the simple fact that they just… aren’t. Not yet, anyway, and Jack is so staunchly proper around her whenever there is anyone to observe them that she wonders how anyone might make the assumption. 

And since it’s her cousin that does so, she quite happily corrects the misnomer.

“Well, aren’t you?” Guy asks with a noncommittal shrug, attention fixed more on his bride-to-be than on Phryne. “You certainly hang off each other’s every sentence like you’re half-expecting la petite mort at the end of it.”

Isabella buries her face into Guy’s shoulder with a giggle, and Guy grins like he’s awfully proud of himself. 

Phryne huffs out a laugh of her own, dismissive. 

“You might want to start easing off on that fudge habit of yours, cousin,” she shoots back, one eyebrow raised, smirk hooked firmly into the corner of her lips. “I hear over usage can dull the senses.”

She leaves the betrothed couple to their chortling amusement with a sigh and a shake of her head. 

When she next sees Jack, though, it’s in a darkened room and her hands move without permission (hers or his) to start undressing him as if she’s done it a thousand times before. She presumes to touch him like they are lovers and the moment she realises she has the sensation burns itself into her fingertips and resolves not to be forgotten. 

They are not lovers, but her hands had wanted to know what it would feel like if they were.

*

The second time is less of a surprise and more a moment of bemusement, the word batted at her in jest but enough to bring her up short, nevertheless. 

She’s all but slammed the door in Jack’s face when she storms into the kitchen, fury no doubt rolling off her – certainly by the looks of those assembled. 

“Lovers’ tiff?” Bert asks, around a mouthful of something (Mr. Butler’s freshly made shortbread if the delightful smell of the room is anything to go by) and Phryne turns confused, irritated eyes on him. 

“What?” she snaps, and watches in confusion as Cec slaps Bert on the arm and shakes his head. 

“You and the Inspector having a bit of a barney, were you, Miss Fisher?” Cec asks, and she turns her attention to him. 

“Jack came to accuse me of stealing evidence from a crime scene,” she grumbles, mellowing slightly at the plate of shortbread that appears in front of her, looking up to Mr. Butler where he has appeared like a silent, confectionary-producing angel and shooting him a smile. “Thank you, Mr. B.”

“Why’d he think you stole it?” Bert asks, snagging another piece himself. 

Phryne shrugs. “Well, I might have _borrowed_ it – but I intended to return it as soon as I was done – and I objected to his just presuming that it had to be _me_.”

“So you slammed the door in his face because he was right?” Bert asks, and there is a swift thud under the table, followed by Bert wincing. He turns to Cec with a face of fury, but Cec just shakes his head again, and Bert’s nose screws up in annoyance before his expression smooths once more.

“Probably deserved it,” he grumbles then, and returns to his shortbread. 

Phryne stares down at the untouched piece in her own hand, feeling at once guilty and indignant. Bert’s right to question her, she supposes – she knows she’s not being wholly reasonable. 

She’s not being reasonable at all, in fact, but there is something about Jack accusing her of anything that gets under her skin in a way that is unfamiliar and not completely comfortable, and she finds herself unable not to react to it.

Sometimes she has these arguments just for fun, for the amusement of seeing her stoic Detective Inspector ruffled. Sometimes she has them because she feels the need to prove a point, because Jack is not her keeper and she is not beholden to him and it doesn’t hurt him to be reminded of that when he cares to comment on her risk taking or otherwise eccentric hobbies. Sometimes, though, she has them simply because he intrigues her, arouses her, frustrates her – and some days she just doesn’t know how else to channel that energy but to bicker with him. 

They are not lovers but, God knows, they have learnt to quarrel like they are.

*

The third time, she supposes, she should have expected. 

Her Aunt is a good, kind-hearted woman under all the society and bluster – but she doesn’t half know how to have an _opinion_ on something. 

Phryne watches Jack drive off, the feel of his hands where they’d sat all too briefly on her waist as he’d kissed her cheek in farewell lingering against the satin of her gown. She sighs, painting her smile back on and turning around to head back to the party. 

And nearly has a heart attack. 

“Aunt P!” she exclaims as the dark shadow emerges from the doorway, stepping into the porch light, an expression illuminating on her face that Phryne knows all too well. 

Disapproval. 

“Were you planning on returning to your guests, Phryne, or would you like me to explain your ingratitude to them on your behalf?” 

Phryne rolls her eyes, throwing a smirk back at her aunt. 

“I’ve not been gone _that_ long, Aunt P, I was just saying goodbye to Jack – he’s had to go and see to something at the station.” 

Her aunt’s eyes simply narrow at her. “Well you’ve been gone long enough to be _noticed_.” She lets out a huff. “Honestly, Phryne, I know you claim not to care about your reputation, but would it hurt to employ a little subtlety in public, at least?”

Phryne blinks at her, confused. 

“Aunt P, I don’t know what you – ”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, girl, isn’t it enough for you to be running around after him catching killers? Must you flaunt the fact that you’re lovers across all Melbourne society as well?” 

And her mouth falls open. 

It isn’t that she wouldn’t _like_ Jack to be her lover. Rapidly, she’s finding that there isn’t a lot she’d like more than that – and she’s starting to feel assured that he might even be of the same mindset now. 

They aren’t, though. In reality they’re still far from it, still dancing a dance with more steps left than she wants to count. 

Hopefully they’ll get there, but they’re certainly not yet. Regardless, it’s hardly society’s business anyway. 

“Jack and I aren’t lovers, Aunt P,” she tells her, gathering herself. “Although even if we were, I’m not sure Melbourne society gets to have an opinion on it.”

“Melbourne society has an opinion on everything,” Prudence responds, “whether you want it to or not.” 

She notes her aunt says nothing about her denial and, strangely, she feels the need to repeat it. 

“Well we’re not lovers,” she says again, “it’s all very above board, so they can think whatever they want.” 

Her aunt’s expression softens somewhat, but it’s to sympathy rather than anything else. She opens her mouth, looking for all the world like she’s going to say something further, but then abruptly shuts it again. 

It might be the first time she’s ever observed her aunt quite obviously not speaking her mind, and Phryne finds herself desperately curious to know what the swallowed words might have been. 

“Come back inside, Phryne,” she requests instead, and then turns to go herself, evidently expecting Phryne to follow without question. 

She does, on this occasion, mind too preoccupied with the conversation – and the words her aunt hadn’t said – to bother arguing. 

The next time she and Jack attend an event (and every day in between, as well – any and every interaction they have that is observed, whether in front of suspects or colleagues or even her family) she pays more attention to the way people watch them, the looks they shoot at the two of them when they assume they can’t be seen. She pays attention to the judgement, the amusement, the suspicion – and rapidly comes to an alarming conclusion. 

They are not lovers, but it would seem that everyone else thinks that they are. 

*

The fourth time, perhaps on cue, it’s Mac that says it. 

Less predictably, it’s in a hushed, sympathetic voice as she wraps an arm around her and shoves a whiskey into her fingers. 

“Lovers fight, Phryne,” she murmurs, reassuring, as Phryne stares down at the glass now in her hand and battles the infuriating urge to become teary. “I know you don’t generally like having them around long enough to reach that stage but, believe me, they do. He’ll come around.” 

“We’re not lovers, Mac,” Phryne responds, dejected, swirling the whiskey about and watching the way the lamplight refracts through the amber liquid. 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Mac mumbles into her own glass, and Phryne turns her head to look at her. 

“Why does everyone think that?” she demands, indignation swelling to overwhelm her grief for the moment. What she and Jack have, what they are, what they aren’t – they haven’t finished working it out yet themselves (now maybe they never will) and she is so tired of everyone’s insistence to misidentify it on their behalf. 

Mac, for her part, looks genuinely taken aback by the sudden outburst. 

“What do you mean?” 

Phryne huffs, sitting up to shrug off Mac’s arm and turn to her. “Jack and I _aren’t_ lovers, Mac. And I wish people would stop just assuming that we are – it’s no one else’s business, either way.” 

Mac regards her carefully, eyes narrowing just slightly, then she reaches out to deposit her glass on the table and turn back to Phryne. 

“You’re right,” Mac starts, “it’s no one else’s business.” 

Phryne fidgets in response to this, mildly gratified. 

“But you are lovers, Phryne – or might as well be.” 

And at this, Phryne frowns. 

“Mac, I’ve never even kissed the man… well I suppose that’s not true, actually, but that was strictly business. The point is that he hasn’t… we haven’t…” She groans in frustration. “Why don’t people believe me when I say nothing’s happened between us?” 

“Has nothing happened between you, though?” Mac presses. “Really?” 

“ _No_.” She would know, after all, it’s not like she hasn’t been _waiting_. 

“So, you’ve never, say… needed comfort and found he’s the one you want it from?” 

Phryne blinks. Well, yes, she has as it happens – but she fails to see how that’s relevant. 

“You’ve never shared a look with him over a whiskey that you wouldn’t also happily throw at me?” Mac’s right eyebrow rises, and Phryne swallows.

She might love Mac to the ends of the earth and back again, but it has to be said, she absolutely would _not_ look at her with some of the same expressions she knows she’s thrown at Jack. Mac would probably haul her into hospital to check for some sort of head injury if she did. 

“Never found yourself a little bit breathless when he looks at you or touches you or says something a few degrees south of appropriate?” 

Phryne takes a shaky breath, starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. 

“What’s your point, Mac?”

Mac folds her arms across her chest, gaze narrowing further. “Would you die for him?” 

She startles, mouth dropping open, knee-jerk protest ready to escape. At odds as they are right now, though, denial feels wrong.

“I’d die for any of my friends,” she hedges, instead – because it’s true. She’d rather not, frankly, since she quite enjoys being alive – but if it came to it there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for someone she loves. 

Is that Mac's point, that she loves him?

Of course she loves him, though, he’s her friend. Her friend who she also just happens to want in her bed.

“You wouldn’t invite just any of your friends into your bed, though,” Mac adds, as if reading her thoughts. 

“But I _haven’t_ invited him into my bed,” Phryne insists, frustrated. Strictly speaking, that’s true – she’s never outright invited Jack into her bed, not in so many words. “Not exactly.” 

Mac lets out a sigh as irritated as Phryne feels, and reaches over to remove the undrunk whiskey from her fingers, placing it next to her own and then taking Phryne’s hands in hers, tugging so that she meets her eye. 

“Phryne, darling, for an intelligent woman you have a remarkable knack for being obtuse.” 

Phryne opens her mouth to protest this, but Mac shakes her head. 

“Sex is not the only thing that makes people lovers, Phryne.” Mac continues with a huff. “It _can_ be – you’ve had plenty of lovers with whom that’s all it’s been about – but it’s not the only way to define it. You can be lovers before so much as touching each other if that’s what’s in your heart – sex is just… it’s just a way to then make that official.” 

Phryne licks her lips, mind working over what Mac’s saying.

“Dot and Hugh are lovers, aren’t they? But we know they’re not doing anything God might not approve of.” 

“But that’s…” Phryne shakes her head, processing. “That’s different, Mac, they’re… Dot and Hugh are…”

“Dot and Hugh are what?” 

“Official,” she replies, for want of anything better. 

Mac levels a look at her which she instantly despises – one that says she knows she’s won, and she’s going in for the kill. 

“They’re not married,” she says. “Not even engaged, yet. And we know for a fact that no one’s getting their ashes hauled there – so what is it that makes them lovers, really, would you say? What makes the two of them more official than, say, you and Jack?” 

Phryne turns away and snags her whiskey back, taking a long drink and then staring back into the glass. 

Loath as she is to admit it… Mac might actually be right. 

She and Jack are so thoroughly caught in each other’s orbit that the lack of consummation, in many ways, is largely irrelevant. It’s been her focus – impatient as she’s been for it – and the factor on which she has allowed herself to continue in denial of any feelings beyond her lust. 

He has yet to touch her, so they are not lovers, and thus there is little more to it than that. 

That isn’t true, though, of course it isn’t – because, whether he’s touched her or not, the truth is that he has her heart regardless. 

The realisation washes over her with none of the joy it might have had she had it twenty-four hours ago. 

They are not lovers – except that they are, and they have been, really, since whenever the day was that they silently handed their hearts to each other – but if he doesn’t come around then the distinction may not matter anymore, anyway. 

*

She stops counting, after that – either because she doesn’t notice so much or doesn’t care to. The next time she does notice, though, is so long removed from the last that Phryne feels startled if only for the fact that it truly no longer bothers her the way it once had. 

She has thought of Jack as her lover, now, for months that have extended far too long without consummation, still, but months in which the notion has settled itself firmly into her heart nevertheless; and she no longer cares to correct it when people make the assumption. 

Phryne finds she does resent, however, that the first person she has to hear it from since acknowledging it (in all but name) to _him_ , is her damn father. 

“I have to say, Phryne,” he comments around his eggs. “That’s a good man you’ve got yourself there.” 

She finds herself torn between annoyance at the implication that she might need one, or that it’s any of her father’s damn business to have an opinion on it in the first place, and warmth at the memory his words evoke of Jack’s hands on her, his lips on hers. 

God, but they had been so close, and she cannot help but hope he’ll follow her like she asked. She’s not sure she can bear to wait until such a time as she might make it back again. 

“How long have you been lovers? I wish you’d have told us – your mother would be delighted to know that you’re so happy.” 

“I’m not sure that’s any of her business, father,” she replies, clipped. “Or yours, for that matter. Now finish your omelette, I’d like to make it to India by the end of the week, if you don’t mind.” 

She only realises afterwards, as she climbs back into the plane and fiddles with the swallow pin that sits nestled into the fabric of her scarf, that this is the first time she has sort of confirmed it, even if only with evasion.

It feels a little odd when they _still_ have barely touched each other, and her original definition is still unfulfilled. Her relationship to the word has changed so, since that first time that Guy flung it at her like an accusation – even when she and Jack, in many ways, have not. 

They are not lovers, not yet, not in all the ways – but they are, and they will be, and she can hardly sleep but for the anticipation of it all. 

*

The first time someone says it afterwards, after misunderstandings and arguments, confessions and reconciliations – after they finally, finally become lovers in all the meanings of the word (and the way she’s always wanted) – Phryne finds herself smirking so obviously that Jack catches it. 

She does her best to reign it in, to pull the smile back, but it’s in the corners of her mouth, curving her lips upwards with neither permission nor subtlety. 

“Something funny?” Jack asks, under his breath, leaning in slightly towards her as their host turns to exchange quick words with the servant who has just arrived. 

“I’ll tell you later,” she assures him, placing a hand briefly against his thigh and then removing it again as the other occupants of the room turn back to them. 

Later turns out to be several interviews and a luncheon later, in the short moment they have before they’re expected at the first of what promises to be many memorial events, when she has slipped through the adjoining door in their rooms to stare him down with intent as he fiddles with his cufflinks. 

“She called us lovers,” Phryne tells him by way of greeting, and Jack’s hands fall from his sleeves, eyebrows pulling together at the non sequitur. 

“What?” 

“Earlier, with the Rajmata,” she explains. “She said ‘I might have put you next door to each other, Miss Fisher, but I expect you to be discreet about the fact that you’re lovers whilst you’re here mourning my son’.” 

“And here I assumed the amusement must have been to do with the idea of being discreet,” Jack quips, and Phryne smiles. 

“I am exceptionally discreet, Jack,” she shoots back, one eyebrow raised as she crosses the room to him and reaches for his abandoned cufflinks. He wouldn’t ask, she knows, would never presume to request she perform a task that would cast her in so subservient a role. When she offers, though, when her hands reach up to knot his tie or brush down a lapel, she’s noticed the adoration that sits in his eyes as he watches her. As if he can’t believe they are her hands that touch him, even now, after all this time of being lovers, but not quite lovers, and all these weeks of being it all. He watches her choose to touch him as if he might just burst from the joy of it. 

She understands though, she feels it just the same. She has wanted Jack’s hands on her so long that every time they are, she half thinks she’s dreaming them. 

“When you want to be.”

“Mm,” she hums, fixing the cuffs and moving her hands to rest gently against his chest, staring up at him. “It was the lovers comment that amused me, though.” 

“And may I ask why?” Jack inquires, raising an eyebrow, hands moving to sit on her waist. 

“It’s just the first time anyone’s said it since… well since we made it more official,” she smirks, mind on the desert and how very thoroughly they had done so. 

Jack’s lips quirk upwards, expression turning bemused. “ _More_ official?”

Phryne leans in closer, eyes on his lips, one hand creeping up to snake around his neck. 

“Well,” she breathes, a soft whisper, and looks back up to meet his eye. “We were lovers for a long time before what happened in that tent, Jack. If you really think about it.” 

Several emotions swim through Jack’s gaze as he looks back at her – joy, amusement, awe.

“Did you think about it?” he asks, fingers tightening just slightly on her waist.

“Yes. Mainly how annoyed I was that people assumed we were when you wouldn’t so much as touch me. Then that your touching me or not touching me might not have much bearing on the matter, either way – although I admit that Mac had a hand in that.”

“Oh?”

“She made a point about what we were to each other regardless, and it rather altered how I saw things,” she explains. 

Jack looks down at her, curious. 

“Altered how?” he asks. 

“Let’s just say I stopped correcting people after that.”

“Miss Fisher,” Jack says, mockingly scandalised, “am I to take it that you’ve been going around letting people think we were lovers?” 

“We are lovers, Jack,” she purrs in response, reaching up to brush their lips together, fingers stroking the soft hair at his nape. “We have been far longer than either of us realised. I wasn’t lying when I said I gave you my heart a long time ago.” 

“No,” he breathes, and this is just awed. “I wasn’t lying, either, when I said you had mine – though I realise now I’ve been remiss in clarifying how very long you’ve had it for, Miss Fisher, for which I can only apologise.”

He leans in then and kisses her himself, hands at her waist pulling him flush against her, and Phryne’s eyes fall closed.

For several minutes she surrenders herself to the feel of him, utterly lost in the sensation of Jack’s hands as they start to roam further, his lips against hers, tongue teasing out a slow exploration of her mouth. Then he pulls back, the both of them distinctly more breathless, and looks her in the eye.

“You’re right, by the way, I think I was your lover a long time before I touched you.”

Phryne smiles. “And I was yours – but I do much prefer you touching me.”

Jack leans in again and she meets him, sinking back into the warmth of his mouth against hers. 

They are lovers, at long last, and still. They are lovers like her hands had wanted, like their quarrels had predicted, and like everyone assumed they always had been. They are what she had once assumed lovers to be as well as everything she hadn’t, the simple definition, based purely on consummation, but also so much more besides. 

They are lovers, but she finds the word no longer matters. The point has never really been the word they use, anyway, when in so many ways they have been lovers all along.

They are lovers, but what matters more is simply that they are in love.


End file.
